Anyone work in a Pharmacy or Dispensary? Design help please

[tim]

I have been asked to redesign the local surgery dispensary. The majority of this is bread and butter to me ie new desk, storage, work surfaces etc. However, the main problem that needs to be resolved is the storage of prescription orders. At the moment these are held in a variety of plastic tubs which are nominally alphabetically labelled and to speed things slightly, bags containing prescribed items are either red for women or blue for men. What they need is a system not involving the pharmacists/ assistants rummaging through two or three boxes which allows them to get the prescription to the patient as quickly as possible.

The numbers and sizes of prescription orders varies by letter every month so there isn't an obvious 'average'. I have been to three or four dispensing chemists but they mainly complete the prescription while you wait, so storage is no issue. The dispensary staff in my case want to be able to pre bag as many prescriptions as they can when they have down time etc.

Anyone got any good ideas or know of similar systems that might have transferable benefits?

Cheers

Tim

 

[Adam]

Talk to a local hospital - they hold their prescriptions much longer, for patients, whilst a porter turns up to collect them etc.

How about something that rotates etc?

Adam

 

[trevtheturner]

Hi Tim,

If you find yourself in the Weobley area, have a look in the surgery there. They have recently refurbished their dispensary and have a new racked, alphabetical system, for ordered repeat prescriptions made up in advance of collection, which seems to work extremely efficiently and quickly without any problems. FWIW.

Cheers,

Trev.

 

[RogerS]

...or if they are stuck for space....keept the red/blue split but then sub-divide by surname along the lines of the old telephone directories A-D, E-K, L-R, S-Z ...but seeing as where you're based maybe a separate one for J as in Jones and W as in Williams :wink:

 

[ike]

... or a look in a large Tesco store.

 

[Freetochat]

Something like this

 

[AndyBoyd]

Funny this came up recently, we were talking about this just the other day with my fellow furniture makers - pharmacies here (NL) have some very impressive long (deep) drawers (2m long - I kid you not) . The reason is many things can be stored in long thin drawers

Blum apparently have a special brochure just on such things, albeit I have never seen it. Especaily the ones that self close with little dampers to cushon the impact - very neat indeed. Just googled this and failed to get any hits - anyone else know of this Blum offering?

I'm always way impressed when I visit a pharamcy here compared to how I remember the UK ones . And of course add to that the European contemporary design flair.

 

[Adam]

Especaily the ones that self close with little dampers to cushon the impact - very neat indeed. Just googled this and failed to get any hits - anyone else know of this Blum offering?

I've seen this in action - they are silky smooth. I can't resist opening loads of them and watching them glide back in. (Missus works in a hospital pharmacy).

Adam